Occult and Esoteric Doctrines in Russia after the Collapse of Communism Demyan Belyaev - Peter Lang Publishing
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Occult and Esoteric Doctrines in Russia
after the Collapse of Communism
Demyan Belyaev
After the collapse of the communist system it was not only the established
denominations (the Russian Orthodox Church, various Protestant churches)
that experienced a boom in Russia, as people tried to fill the spiritual and ideo-
logical vacuum left behind by the previous system.1 Numerous religious and
spiritual movements, which current scientific classifies as occultism, esoteri-
cism or alternative religion have been offering ways of coping with life to a
population that is looking for meaning.
As early as 1988 the national newspapers ran the first articles on UFOs,
yoga and parapsychology that showed none of the aggressive and “unmasking”
features previously characteristic of publications on these topics. Now these
areas were presented as merely “insufficiently researched” and “full of open
questions”. The pioneer of this process was the national newspaper Komso-
mol’skaia pravda, whose target audience was mostly the generation of 20-30
year olds. Soon after the newspapers had broached the subject, books using the
same neutral popular-scientific approach with regard to contentious issues
began to appear.2
The first newspaper exclusively specializing in this subject area appeared in
1990 under the title Anomaliia. Publisher and editorial board, who had set
themselves the goal of providing unbiased reports on enigmatic phenomena,
chose the following epigraph for their newspaper: “The miracle is not incom-
patible with nature but with what we know about nature”. In the first two years
the paper’s print run reached 250,000 copies per issue. However, shortly after-
wards the number of copies sold fell quickly, probably because of the emer-
gence of a large number of rival publications on the same subject.
1 The author gratefully acknowledges the financial support provided by the Deutsche For-
schungsgemeinschaft (DFG) to the research project that led to the findings presented here.
Some of them also appeared in Demyan Belyaev, “Heterodox Religiosity in Russia after the
Fall of Communism: Does it Challenge ‘Traditional’ Religion?” Religion, State & Society 2010,
no. 38 (2), 135–151.
2 Aleksandr Vengerov, Predskazaniia i prorochestva: za i protiv (Moscow, 1991).
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This newspaper still exists, if in significantly modified form. However, the
highest number of copies (up to 550,000 copies per monthly issue) has been
reached by other specialized esoteric newspapers and journals, including Ora-
cle, UFO, Secret Power, The Age of Aquarius, and Paranormal News (Orakul,
NLO, Tainaia vlast’, Era Vodoleia, Anomal’nye novosti). The largest of these,
Oracle, belongs to the German media corporation Bauer and, unlike the above-
mentioned pioneering publications, has a strong commercial focus and relies
heavily on advertising. The newspaper is sold in Russia, Ukraine and other
countries. However, it is marketed not as a yellow-press paper but a world-
view-specific publication with an orientation towards popular science.3
Political liberalization was followed by a rapid growth in publications on all
kinds of topics related to occult knowledge. The books of Blavatsky, Roerich,
Gurdjieff, Andreev and other Russian and Western esotericists of the past
came out in huge print runs. The number of publically acting healers, magi-
cians and astrologers grew exponentially. Healing with the help of magic tech-
niques was especially popular.4 Moreover, other movements that the author of
this article considers to be at the margins of the esoteric subculture, such as
Slavic neo-paganism and the concomitant Russian nationalism5 or traditional
shamanism in Siberia6 and certain other Russian regions, have also seen an
upturn.
TV played a special role in the process of spreading esoteric knowledge and
skills in the years of Perestroika. The uniqueness of this historic moment
probably consists in the fact that the mass media were still highly centralized
when the Soviet Union collapsed, while state control over the information
presented in these media suddenly disappeared. This is why those who man-
aged to gain prominence on TV as esotericists during this time quickly ac-
quired country-wide fame.
The first popular subject was healing. On 31 March 1988 the Ukrainian
doctor Anatolii Kashpirovskii (b. 1939) performed a live operation on the show
Vzgliad, using a kind of hypnosis as an anaesthetic. On 9 October 1989 the
public channel Ostankino, which can be received all over Russia, began broad-
casting Kashpirovskii’s healing séances. In 1989 the Muscovite Allan Chumak
3 Interview of the author with Ol’ga Monachova, Moscow, 23/08/2007.
4 Galina Lindquist, Conjuring Hope: Healing and Magic in Contemporary Russia (London,
2006).
5 Marlène Laruelle, “The Two Faces of Contemporary Eurasianism: An Imperial Version of
Russian Nationalism,” In: Nationalities Papers 2004, no. 32(1), 115–136.
6 Marjorie Balzer, Shamanic Worlds. Rituals and Lore of Siberia and Central Asia. (New York,
1997).
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(b. 1935), a trained sports coach and journalist, appeared with similar séances
for the first time. While live on TV he charged water, food and other items
with healing energy, solely by gesticulating, unlike Kashpirovskii, who pro-
nounced some formulae.7
The next vogue was astrology. In January 1989 the astrologist Pavel Globa
(b. 1953), a trained historian and archivist, and his wife Tamara made their
first appearance on the Leningrad channel The Fifth Wheel (Piatoe koleso).
Pavel Globa had been teaching astrology underground since the late 1970s, for
which he was charged for anti-Soviet agitation and imprisoned. The Globas
have made a significant contribution to the popularity of astrology among the
broad masses of the Russian population, mostly by propagating astrology as a
form of ancient esoteric knowledge with links to Zoroastrianism. Their prog-
noses for the future, including politics, which they regularly presented on TV,
also became popular with ordinary Russians.
The third very popular area of applied occultism was magic. In the late
1980s–early 1990s, also on TV, the Ukrainian Iurii “Longo” Golovko (1956–
2006) gained notoriety as a practitioner of white, practical magic. The phe-
nomena demonstrated included levitation and even the resurrection of the
dead. Later on, he switched to individual consultations. In the last years of his
life Longo spoke frequently about his plans to found a “practical religion” that
would help people to do the right thing in various situations.8
Although these individuals were national celebrities in the late 1980s, they
no longer have the same influence on the population as they used to, but they
remain active to the present day, mostly in the esoteric milieu. Kashpirovskii,
for example, has been on several short tours throughout Russia since 2005,
even though his performances no longer draw large audiences and there have
been a number of protests against his “charlatanism” in several towns (Nov-
gorod, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskii). Allan Chumak toured Germany for a
month in 2005, giving séances in various towns. Just like Kashpirovskii, he
seems most popular among Russian émigrés who left in the late 1980s–early
1990s and maintain links to aspects of Russian culture that were prominent
during that historical period (e.g. pop singers who have long since fallen into
oblivion in Russia itself). Pavel Globa still reads the horoscope every morning
on one of the commercial TV channels and publishes articles in newspapers
and journals. He also advises politicians and businessmen.9
7 See, e.g., http://www.peoples.ru/medicine/psychology/anatoliy_kashpirovskiy/index.html
8 Jurii Longo, Ėntsiklopediia samoistseleniia i tainykh znanii (Moscow: Ėksmo, 2004).
9 See e.g. www.globa.ru
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During the market reforms of the 1990s the range of esoterically oriented
materials and activities grew so large that now there is a large number of active
magicians, astrologers and healers. However, what they all have in common is
that their practice is usually limited to a single service to a single customer
(“client”). This service can entail information or advice (in the case of astrolo-
gers and tarot readers) or healing and/or health promotion (the two kinds of
healers most common in Russia are called celiteli and ekstrasensy).10 These rep-
resentatives of the esoteric sub-culture in contemporary Russia are not organ-
ized in institutions (associations etc), which makes establishing their true num-
ber next to impossible. Representatives of the esoteric subculture often advertise
in free magazines, complete with photos.
Due to the overall lack of both institutional organization and written
sources, providing a structural overview of this part of the Russian esoteric
milieu is possible only to a very limited degree. In addition to the first differen-
tiation according to specialization – astrologers, tarot readers, magicians etc –
first attempts have been made in the literature to divide, for example, those
esotericists who engage in various kinds of healing practice into subgroups
according to the main method of healing they use.11 Perhaps the same ap-
proach could be used in order to structure the milieu of magicians, wizards and
fortune-tellers.
However, the scene in contemporary Russia is not limited to those repre-
sentatives of the esoteric subculture we have subsumed under the term “suppli-
ers of exclusively applied esotericism”. Next to them we find those who special-
ize mostly in the dissemination and/or teaching of different schools, training
systems and practices. These systems and practices offer different focal points
to their followers, e.g. influence on the human body (like Malakhov’s Cleansing
of the Organism, (Ochishchenie organizma), Levshinov’s How to get a Perfect
Figure (Kak sdelat’ figuru velikolepnoi) or Norbekov’s Path towards Youth and
Health (Tropinka k bodrosti i zdorov’iu), the development of certain abilities
that the majority of people do not possess (Zolotov, Klein, the “late” Norbekov
and Bronnikov) or how to bring about fundamental changes in the relation-
ship between man and his surroundings (Lazarev, Sinel’nikov und Sviiash).
This theoretically founded section of the esoteric subculture includes bio-
energetics (often also called psychics), the development of psychic abilities, as
well as several approaches from the field of practical psychology as long as they
10 This is not the same as “psychics” known in the West as the alleged principle of their work is
different.
11 Evgenii Panov, Naidi svoego tselitelia (Moscow, 2000).
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appeal to the existence of supernatural forces or laws. Some the most impor-
tant forms of knowledge transfer for the representatives of this second section
of the esoteric subculture are the so-called “seminars for personality develop-
ment”. One of the first such seminars was held in 1988 in Southern Siberia by
Boris Zolotov and his closest disciples, Nikolai Denisov and Aleksandr Klein.
Zolotov (b. 1947) is a native of the city of Odessa and from the family of a
military rocket engineer and member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. He
calls himself a “specialist in complex systems”. According to the participants in
his seminars, Zolotov allegedly possesses healing - and other unusual abilities.
During the 1990s Zolotov regularly held seminars in different cities in the
Ukraine (Kiev, Kherson, Krivoi Rog), Bulgaria, Hungary and Russia. A large
Zolotov-seminar took place from 10 July–10 September in Evpatoriia (Cri-
mea). Zolotov’s methods for working with his disciples resemble the ones used
by the Sufis: knowledge is transferred not directly (verbally) but must reveal
itself to the disciple, without further action from the teacher, during the proc-
ess of living through certain situations in which his teacher has placed him.
Zolotov himself says he is teaching “expert-operative interaction”.
Another important way of communicating esoteric knowledge in contem-
porary Russia, both theoretical and practical, is through books. The pioneer in
this field was Gennadii Malakhov (b. 1954), who published his first book on
this topic, Cleansing of the Organism and Diet (Ochishchenie organizma i pita-
nie), in 1991 in the small southern town of Staryi Oskol. This book was fol-
lowed by several others and, according to Book Market Survey (Knizhnoe obo-
zrenie), by 1995 Malakhov (b. 1954) had sold more than four million copies of
his highly esteemed four volumes. He still lives in his native town of Kamensk–
Shakhtinskii in the Rostov area in southern Russia. He regularly travels the
country, meets his followers, publishes a newspaper, has his own TV show and
owns the publishing house Genesha.
Mirzakarim Norbekov (b. 1957) came to Moscow in 1993 and began to
hold health promotion séances on various stages, just like Andrei Levshinov (b.
1957) in St. Petersburg. Later they both turned to writing books, trying to gain
a bigger audience for their ideas and healing methods, in the same way as
Malakhov. First they both collaborated with experienced female authors – Lev-
shinov with Valentina Travinka in 199512 and Norbekov with Larisa Fotina13 in
1996. Later they each wrote bestsellers that made them famous throughout
12 Andrei Levshinov, Valentina Travinka, Isprav’ sud’bu svoiu! (Moscow, 2001).
13 Larisa Fotina, Mirzakarim Norbekov, Doroga v molodost’ i zdorov’e. Prakticheskoe rukovodstvo
dlia mushchin i zhenshchin (Moscow, 2002).
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Russia.14 Norbekov organized a network of courses for the restitution of sight.
Subsequently he began offering courses for the development of intuition,
which he presents as a necessary prerequisite for founding one’s own company
and improving one’s financial situation. Levshinov taught yoga and Qi Gong
and held outdoor training sessions abroad, which he called “grand master
classes”.
At the end of the 1990s, Aleksandr Sviiash (Sviiash), Valerii Sinel`nikov
und Viacheslav Bronnikov appeared on the Russian scene. Chronologically
they belong to the “third wave” of esotericism. Sviiash’s first book, How to
design events in your life with the power of thought (Kak formirovat’ sobytiia
svoei zhizni s pomoshch’iu sily mysli) came out in 1997 and became the corner-
stone of his doctrine and his training center called The Sensible Way (Razum-
nyi put’). Sviiash told me that he began to study esotericism seriously in 1990
and that he attended Boris Zolotov’s seminars among others. Although he
painstakingly avoids esoteric terminology in his latest works, he explains the
laws of the world that surrounds us using concepts such as “astral bodies of
man” (ton’kie tela), “egregore” etc, which clearly identifies him as a propagator
of esoteric knowledge rather than, for example, conventional psychotherapy.15
The same applies to Sinel’nikov, who became popular only when his book Love
your Illness (Vozliubi bolezn’ svoiu) came out in 2000. Over the course of a kind
of ideological drift, Sinel’nikov gradually moved away from orthodox medical
training to homeopathy, modern Western psychotherapy and hypnosis and
finally towards an esoteric worldview.16
Bronnikov claims to have discovered a phenomenon of “direct vision” via
the brain or rather, with closed eyes. He calls the alleged capacity of the brain
to function in such mode the “biocomputer”, a skill which, according to him,
can be trained in many people.17 But whether the “biocomputer” is the brain or
the phenomenon of direct vision, or the brain’s capacity to function in this
mode is not clear.
Some of Bronnikov’s disciples have been examined at the Institute for Brain
Research in St. Petersburg, which is part of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Allegedly the scientific Director of the Institute, Natalia Bekhtereva, confirmed
14 Andrei Levshinov, Taina upravleniia sud’boi (Moscow, 2002); Mirzakarim Norbekov, Opyt
duraka, ili kliuch’ k prozreniiu. Kak izbavit’sia ot ochkov (Moscow, 2003).
15 Aleksandr Sviiash, Razumnyi mir (Moscow, 2006).
16 Valerii Sinel’nikov, Tainy podsoznaniia (Moscow, 2006).
17 This is not the same as “remote viewing” known by some Western psychics. “Direct vision” is
the literal translation of Bronnikov’s term, which is preferred here given that the technique he
teaches is peculiar in itself.
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the existence of the phenomenon of “direct vision”. In 2003 Bronnikov began
to sell video recordings of his training sessions, and in 2005 he founded the
first regional training centers for teaching the “Bronnikov Method.” Just like
Norbekov, Bronnikov is one of those esotericists who seek recognition from
traditional science, which is why he gave his doctrine the scientific-sounding
term “Cosmo-psycho-biology”. Still relatively unknown esotericists also fre-
quently give their doctrines scientific-sounding names; examples include Ton-
kov’s “biosensoric psychology” or the “spiritual psychocybernetics” by Genna-
dii Mir (Miroshnichenko) from Tula.
In addition to the abovementioned esotericists, this subculture also has a
large number of activists who are not seeking a large audience but prefer to
concentrate on teaching relatively small groups. Examples include Zolotov’s
disciple Nikolai Denisov (school The Golden Ray (Zolotoi luch)), Sergei Ro-
masenko and Aleksandr Klein, the main proponent of Russian Zen. In 2005
Klein organized twelve different seminars in a holiday center near Moscow on
Second Logic (Vtoraia logika), as he calls his system. Others include Sergei
Rozov and Artur Razumov in St. Petersburg, Vasilii Goch in Tallinn and
Vladimir Lermontov in Bolshoi Utrish. Less influential esotericists often have
no institutionalized schools of their own but sometimes use “Centers for Spiri-
tual Development” such as The Other World (Drugoi mir) in St. Petersburg or
Help Yourself (Pomogi sebe sam) in Moscow as their platforms, or open air
festivals such as Inlakesh in the summer. Esoteric bookshops such as White
Clouds (Belye oblaka) in Moscow are other venues that attract these figures.
There are some clear cases of fraud where people pretending to represent
the esoteric subculture are looking only for financial gain. Notorious is the case
of Grigorii Grabovoi from Kazakhstan in 2006, who offered to resurrect, for a
fee, the school children killed during the attack by Chechen separatists in
Beslan. He was subsequently given a prison sentence.18 However, such cases are
for the most part exceptions. On the whole it is noteworthy that those who are
now recognized as bearers and disseminators of esoteric knowledge began to
engage with this subject matter well before the fall of the Soviet Union. Thus it
is very hard to accuse them of having chosen esotericism simply as a conven-
ient way of making money in the financially difficult transitional period of the
1990s.
Andrei Levshinov told me that he has been interested in yoga, karate and
psychology since 1978. Gennadii Malakhov was the director of the Alertness
(bodrost’) club for natural healing as early as 1984. Sergei Lazarev began his
18 „Grabovogo vziali po-chernomu,“ Nezavisimaia gazeta, 07.04.2006.
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research in the field of bioenergetics around 1980. Sinel’nikov met his karate
teacher Vladimir Zhikarentsev when he was 14, a meeting that was, according
to him, decisive for his later wish to become an unusual doctor. Most of these
esotericists were born in the 1950s and are therefore presently at the height of
their creative careers. All these observations suggest that what intensified sig-
nificantly after the collapse of the Soviet Union was not the interest in esoteric
knowledge as such, but merely the scope of this interest and the intense com-
munication of this knowledge to broad groups of the general population.
Different scientific approaches have been used to examine the recent devel-
opments in the religious panorama in Russia (among which esotericism and
occultism are usually counted); they have led to a variety of conclusions.
On the one hand, doubt is cast on the profundity of the beliefs of those
Russians who today refer to themselves as believers. In view of the widespread
belief in astrology and miracles, some people say, it is an exaggeration to speak
of a religious renaissance in Russia, since such a mixture of beliefs ought to be
interpreted as a sign of rejection of all definite religious convictions.19 How-
ever, some scholars say that religiosity in Russia was never very high and the
Orthodox Church, it is suggested, never had a monopoly on religious belief
even in the 18th and 19th centuries.20 Others insist that in Russia even commu-
nism was turned into a religion.21 According to these people the view that the
country underwent a process of secularization in the Soviet era is erroneous, as
is the view that a de-secularization took place during the 1990s. On the con-
trary, the dogmatic and quasi-religious atheistic system had nothing to do with
secularization, and only today are we witnessing secularization, in its post-
rational, adogmatic-eclectic form. Russia’s spiritual evolution is like a pendu-
lum moving between different kinds of religiosity, that is, from Orthodox
Christianity to communism and atheism towards post-rational eclecticism.22
19 Kimmo Kääriäinen, “Religiousness in Russia after the Collapse of Communism,” Social Com-
pass 1999, no. 46(1), 35–46.
20 Stefan Plaggenborg, „Säkularisierung und Konversion in Russland und der Sowjetunion,“ In:
Lehmann, H., ed., Säkularisierung, Dechristianisierung, Rechristianisierung im neuzeitlichen
Europa (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997), 275–292.
21 Sam McFarland, „Communism as Religion,“ International Journal for the Psychology of Reli-
gion 1998, no. 8 (1), 33–48; Edgar Wunder, Religion in der postkonfessionellen Gesellschaft. Ein
Beitrag zur sozialwissenschaftlichen Theorieentwicklung in der Religionsgeographie (Stuttgart,
2005).
22 Dmitrii Furman, „Religion and Politics in Mass Consciousness in Contemporary Russia,“ In:
Lehmann, ed., Säkularisierung, 291–303.
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Some scholars even apply this theory to all of Eastern Europe and argue that
the atheization of Eastern Europe in the 20th century was a myth.23
In the early 1990s it was not only Marxist ideology that was in a very weak
position. Orthodox Christianity had been compromised by decades of collabo-
ration with the Soviet authorities (“spiritual bankruptcy”24) and as a result the
main rivals of Orthodox Christianity, traditionally the dominant religion in
Russia, were those religious doctrines whose adherents “believed not in God
but in supernatural forces.” The adherents in question can identify with Or-
thodox Christianity as well as with Christianity in general and even with athe-
ism; typical for this group is an interest in Eastern religions, spiritism, para-
scientific and para-religious mythology. The latter is seen as a movement
“towards an amorphous, eclectic consciousness that is not denominational and
not even Christian or anti-Christian.”25 Religion in Russia has turned into a
folkloric belief system based on science, para-science and Theosophy. Magic,
occultism and elements of Eastern religions are combined with traditional
Christian dogmas. This, they say, points to the existence of a wholly private
religiosity, the main criterion of which is the ability to construct a worldview of
one’s own.26
Therefore, it is claimed, the “real” religion of Russia is “not Orthodoxy, and
not paganism, shamanism or atheism either”, but rather “a popular religion
combining many elements of different origin.” Only on the surface is there a
thin layer of Orthodox Christian practices, or a Muslim one in post-Soviet
Central Asia, which is home to a “popular religion based on shamanism, Zoro-
astrianism, Islam and other sources.27 The public consciousness of Russia is
seen as dominated by “spiritual entropy”, while within the paradigm of “oc-
cultism-after-atheism“ Orthodox Christianity no longer serves as a source of
beliefs and values, but rather as the “public religion”, that is, a source of the
national ideology and identity that is sought by society.28 Two conflicting ten-
23 Irene Borowik, “Between Orthodoxy and Eclecticism: On the Religious Transformations of
Russia, Belarus and Ukraine,” Social Compass 2002, no. 49 (4), 497–508.
24 Jerry Pankhurst, “Religion in Russia Today,” In: Dmitrii Shalin, ed., Russian Culture at the
Crossroads: Paradoxes of Postcommunist Consciousness (Boulder/Co., 1996), 127–156.
25 Dmitrii Furman, Religion and Politics.
26 Irene Borowik, Between Orthodoxy and Eclecticism.
27 David Lewis, After Atheism. Religion and Ethnicity in Russia and Central Asia (London, 2000),
295.
28 Alexander Agadjanian, “Russian Religion in Media Discourse – Entropy Interlude in
Ideocratic Tradition,” In: M. Kotiranta, ed., Religious Transition in Russia (Helsinki, 2000),
251–288.
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dencies are said to exist in Russian post-communist society: “a syndrome of
missed modernity” and simultaneously “a postmodern framework” which to-
gether result in a “hybrid picture”. The reasons for this hybrid mixture are
identified as a “weak civil society” and “lack of experience in independent pub-
lic treatment of religious questions in a pluralistic context.” 29
The third line of argument derives from cultural studies, rather than the so-
ciology of religion. Scholars point out that occultism normally flourishes “dur-
ing hard times”.30 Its present flourishing is interpreted as a reaction to the
“pseudo-scientific worldview previously propagated as part of the general athe-
istic teaching” 31 and a result of “Russia’s own historical and spiritual heritage”
—a comforting alternative to the rational worldview prescribed by scientific
materialism.32 It is even claimed that there is a connection between the occult
ideas that circulated in Russian society at the beginning of the 20th century and
the later Stalinist regime.33 New Age worldviews in post-communist states are
seen as deeply rooted in utopia and socialism and as means of transporting the
central ideas of socialism into the post-socialist age.34
Among the reasons Russian scholars give for the present growth of esoteri-
cism, mysticism and occultism in Russia and the world are the disintegration
of the motivational principles of the former cultural mainstream of Western
civilization,35 the collapse of faith in science,36 the complexity of human life
which science is not always and not everywhere capable of ordering,37 the real
29 Alexander Agadjanian, “The Search for Privacy and the Return of a Grand Narrative: Religion
in a Post-Communist Society,” Social Compass 2006, no. 53 (2), 169–184.
30 Sidney Monas, “Review of ‘The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture’ by Bernice G. Rosen-
thal,” The Journal of Modern History 1999, no. 71 (2), 517–518.
31 H. Heino, What is Unique in Russian Religious Life, In: Matti Kotiranta, ed., Religious Transi-
tion in Russia (Helsinki, 2000), 289–304.
32 Holly DeNio Stephens, “The Occult in Russia Today,” In: Bernice G. Rosenthal, ed., The
Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture (Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press, 1997), 357–
376.
33 Bernice G. Rosenthal, “Political Implications of the Early Twentieth-Century Occult Revival,”
In: eadem, ed., The Occult, 379–418.
34 Barbara Potrata, “New Age, Socialism and Other Millenarianisms: Affirming and Struggling
with (Post)socialism,” Religion, State & Society 2004, no. 32 (4), 365–379.
35 A. Jurkevich, “’Ėzoterizm’ kak sotsial‘no-kul‘turnyi fenomen v Kitae i na Zapade,” In: L.
Fesenkova, ed., Diskursy ėzoteriki (filosofskii analiz) (Moscow: Editorial URSS, 2001), 148–168,
here 163.
36 V. Vizgin, “Nauka, religiia i ėzotericheskaia traditsiia: ot moderna k postmodernu,” Ibid., 79–
99, here 94.
37 Evgenii Balagushkin, “Ėzoterika v novykh religioznykh dvizheniiakh,” Ibid., 214–239, here
217.
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nature of the human psyche,38 the need for self-affirmation, the striving to-
wards the creation of a perfect society and the desire of intellectuals who con-
sider the traditional religious worldviews slightly primitive to find patterns for
interpreting the world that have a stronger rational or science-like appear-
ance.39
Is it thus true that the present esoteric subculture in Russian could turn into
a rival of traditional (Christian) religiosity and even aspire to a dominant posi-
tion in the religious consciousness of the population? This question motivated
me to carry out my own opinion poll among the Russian population in 2006.
For this poll I presented 1,600 persons from all over Russia with a question-
naire on belief in occult ideas and their experience with occult practices. This
poll has so far been the only scientifically founded quantitative investigation in
Russia specifically designed to analyze the proliferation of occult worldviews in
the Russian population.40
According to the results of the poll the majority of respondents agreed with
thirteen of the examined esoteric worldviews, and even those ideas that were
rejected by or viewed in a sceptical light by the majority were approved by a
relatively large minority.
38 O. Baksanskii, “Psikhologicheskie osnovaniia ėzotericheskikh uchenii (v svete analiticheskoi
psikhologii K. Iunga),” Ibid., 131–146, here 143.
39 L. Fesenkova, “Teosofiia segodnia,” Ibid., 10–35, here 26–30.
40 Demyan Belyaev, „‘Heterodoxe‘ Religiosität auf dem Vormarsch in Russland? Zur empiri-
schen Untersuchung des religiösen Synkretismus im postsozialistischen Raum,“ Zeitschrift für
Religionswissenschaft 2008, no. 16, 177–202.
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Tab. 1 Attitude towards the examined elements of esoteric worldviews
Yes Hard No
Agreed with the following statements: (%) or likely to say or likely
yes no
There is a higher power such as God, providence or others 69 21 10
There is a higher instance of justice that rewards or 61 25 14
punishes people’s acts
It is possible to predict the future 58 27 15
Humanity today is facing a global crisis 56 27 17
Jesus Christ really was the son of God 53 37 10
It is possible to influence other people’s life by magic 53 24 23
Some healers can cure diseases that traditional medicine 52 27 22
cannot cure
Human beings have a soul that can exist independent of 51 31 18
the body
There is a correlation between a person’s zodiac sign and 49 30 21
character
Angels, demons and ghosts do exist 44 36 20
Luck and misfortune are influenced by supernatural 44 33 24
powers or laws
It is possible to read other people’s mind (telepathy) 44 31 25
Talismans can be effective 43 29 28
Governments keep knowledge about the supernatural 34 45 22
secret (“conspiracy”)
Aliens have visited planet Earth already 32 44 24
This is not my first life 29 34 37
It is possible to move objects by the power of thought 24 37 39
Contact with ghosts is possible 19 44 37
Source: Own calculations, representative poll of Russian population in September 2006.
In addition, the respondents were asked about their practical experience with
esotericism or its representatives. We distinguished between several different
kinds of experience. According to our results, over 22% of Russians have had
some contact with a spiritual healer, with a subjective success rate of almost
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56%; almost 35% of Russians over 18 have read some kind of esoteric literature
and around 50% believe they have profited from the advice given in this litera-
ture.
The worldviews we analyzed (see Table 1) can be divided into two groups.
Ideas such as the belief in a soul, God, higher justice, angels and Jesus41 can be
summarized under the label “traditional-religious”. The second, esoteric, group
comprises ideas such as predicting the future, telepathy, moving of objects,
healing, talismans, magic, astrology, and contact with ghosts.42 There is a
strong correlation between these eight ideas, which is not as obvious for the
remaining ideas (also listed in Table 1 but not allocated to either group).
According to our calculations the proportion of convinced non-believers
(i.e. those who do not believe in any of the ideas from the two groups) is rela-
tively low at just under 10%. Around 15% of the population adheres to tradi-
tional religious beliefs (i.e. most of the elements of the first group but not of the
second). In comparison, around 20% of the population have a predominantly
esoteric worldview (believing most of the elements of the second group but not
of the first). Another 27% are both traditionally religious as well as believers in
esoteric ideas (they believe in most ideas from both groups) and around 30%
ostensibly have no consistent convictions in the field of religious or esoteric
belief.
This quantitatively founded result allows us to draw the following conclu-
sions: in contemporary Russia esoteric worldviews are more common than
traditional forms of religiosity. They apply consistently to at least 45% of the
population, compared to 40% who hold traditional Christian ideas and 10%
who adhere to scientific materialism.
It is hardly possible to reduce the complexity of societal relations that have
led to this situation to a few social causes. But we can point to a few specific
conditions that may have encouraged the flourishing of esoteric beliefs. Above
all there is the fact that esoteric and occult doctrines have a long-standing tra-
dition in Russia, in particular among the intellectual elite, both before the Bol-
shevik Revolution and after. Secondly, the fast rejection of Marxist doctrines in
public consciousness in the early 1990s furthered the reception of everything
new, including all kinds of occult and esoteric doctrines. Thirdly, one can say
that perhaps the Russian consciousness (“mentality”) remains less influenced
by the West European Enlightenment. However, this proposition ought to be
proven or refuted with the help of specialized research into mentality.
41 For complete wording see Table 1.
42 For complete wording see Table 1.
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As someone who grew up in Russia and has engaged in extensive research
into Russia during different historical periods, I would like to point out that I
regard any talk about a “break” with the “rational” Soviet past as erroneous.
The Russian people have always been merely human, with all the traits inher-
ent to human nature, including irrationality. Soviet “civilization” was only
superficially “rational” or “different“. Therefore I see no causal relation be-
tween the present rise in esoteric ideas and Soviet civilization, with the poten-
tial exception of the freedom of the press, which did not exist in the Soviet
Union.
It would likewise be a gross exaggeration to talk about a “cult of human-
ism” in the Soviet Union as opposed to a “cult of nihilism” in present-day Rus-
sia. The Soviet cult of humanism was nothing more than a phenomenon of the
belief in science and progress, which was also apparent in the West during this
time. Likewise, the “cult of nihilism” has been known since the days of
Nietzsche and today constitutes a phenomenon of international mass culture,
imported to Russia from the West and consumed there. The fact that certain
Russian writers and other producers of cultural goods are active in this field
does not tell us anything about the genuine worldview of the Russian people,
but merely about their openness to manipulation by the “gatekeepers” of mass
literature, which characterizes the populations of Western countries in much
the same way.
For these reasons it might be more appropriate to regard contemporary
Russian esotericism as part of the development of global society rather than a
reaction to the Soviet past.
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